“Mary Baker Eddy, Mary A. Livermore, and Woman Suffrage”

Darling, Sherry and Janell Fiarman. “Mary Baker Eddy, Mary A. Livermore, and Woman Suffrage.” The Magazine of The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity 4, no. 2 (Fall, 2004): 10-17.

Darling and Fiarman explain how a little-known, but important suffragist, Mary A. Livermore, provides an important link to an understanding of Mary Baker Eddy’s attitudes toward woman suffrage. They were contemporaries whose lives paralleled each other in striking ways: both were writers, publishers, organizers, public speakers, and most of all, deeply religious. “In Livermore, Eddy found a suffragist she could identify with and respect, and, through her, a suffrage organization she wished to support” (15a). Understanding this connection with Livermore throws light on Eddy’s theology also. Eddy’s focus on human progress and the relationships of women and men to God and to each other was a greater calling than the narrower focus of woman suffrage, even though she remained engaged with woman suffrage leaders over a period of thirty years. The movement consisted of many different groups and approaches; and Eddy rejected some, especially those advocates who attacked the Bible as the source of women’s oppression. In the margin of her copy of Stanton’s Woman’s Bible, Eddy wrote, “The man’s Bible is the woman’s bible. We cannot have two if the sexes are equal” (13a). Eddy and Livermore stayed in touch with each other throughout their different spheres of successful careers.

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ISSN 1540-3289